in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 31 ; 



purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue of our own 

 which may guide us among these entanglements. And 

 by way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves — What is 

 education ? Above all things, what is our ideal of a 

 thoroughly liberal education? — of that education which, 

 if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves — 

 of that education which, if we could mould the fates to 

 our own will, we would give our children. Well, I know 

 not what may be your conceptions upon this matter, 

 but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our 

 views are not very discrepant. 



Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and 

 fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, 

 depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. 

 Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a 

 primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves 

 of the pieces ; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen 

 eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check ? 

 Do you not think that we should look with a disappro- 

 bation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed 

 his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow 

 up without knowing a pawn from a knight ? 



Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the 

 life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, 

 and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do 

 depend upon our kn owing something of the rules of a 

 game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. 

 It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every 

 man and woman of us being one of the two players in a 

 game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, 

 the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules 

 of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The 

 player on the other side is hidden from us. We know 

 that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also 



